Read Online The Last Pier by Roma Tearne - Free Book Online Page B

And Cecily was aware her sister’s excitement had become more acute. When she next spoke Rose sounded less cross.
    ‘When you’re older,’ she said, quite kindly, ‘you’ll go out too.’
    It was the first time she had referred to Cecily ever doing similar things and Cecily felt an upsurge of warmth, an almost pyrotechnic explosion of love for Rose. They were both silent. And then it occurred to Cecily in another moment’s clarity that her sister’s interests would have moved on to something else entirely by the time she, Cecily, had reason to shimmy down the drainpipe.
    ‘But what if there’s a war, in the end?’ she asked, suddenly.
    Until she said the words she had not realised that she feared a war. There was a clicking sound in her head. Now all her eavesdropping came together and added up to a total.
    Like a grocery bill or the pocket money owed to her.
    There was going to be a war.
    Joe was going to be in it.
    She saw that her sister was young and free and angry about many things and that the war, and the waiting for it to happen, frightened her as much as it did the grown-ups. She understood that no one could see how it was that she, Cecily, wanted to be young, not young in the way she was now, which was just an extension of being a baby, but older-young, like Rose. To be old enough for Carlo to smile the smile for her that he reserved just for Rose.
    Time was passing as swiftly as a swallow and everyone kept talking about changes ahead. But no one had stopped to think about what it would be like for her to grow up in this war. All of this Cecily saw in a single, clear moment. And then, like the gleam of moonlight in her sister’s eyes, it was gone and she was just the youngest in the family again.
    Rose pulled on some stockings.
    ‘Can I come with you?’
    ‘No, you fool.’
    Cecily felt the urge to ask another question.
    ‘Are you meeting someone?’
    Silence. An owl hooted.
    ‘When will you be back?’
    Rose put on her shoes. Cecily caught another whiff of perfume. Or it might have been the honeysuckle growing under the window.
    ‘Why can’t I come?’
    Again silence. Her sister’s shape moved swiftly across the room. Cecily sighed. And closed her eyes. Danger was perhaps Rose’s element. She thrived on it. Outside, the garden and thewoods and the marshes beyond, all of it, seemed to merge together under the almost full moon. Nothing stirred. But what if their mother had been right, thought Cecily, and curiosity had killed the cat that morning? What of Rose?
     
    She must have dropped off to sleep for she remembered nothing more and when she did wake it wasn’t so much because she’d heard anything as such but rather it was the quality of the silence that woke her.
    She climbed out of bed. There was just enough light to see the dew-damp grass. Their bedroom was at the back of the house, away from their parents, facing the apple orchard. Something was rustling beneath the honeysuckle creeper out of sight. Cecily saw a pair of arms, bare to the elbow, a satin sleeve, a foot in a sandal. Her sister’s bent head came into view and there was a pause before it disappeared again. Cecily heard a slithering sound.
    ‘Rose!’
    A dark bird flew slowly across the horizon. For a second Cecily had a fleeting memory of the dead cat. Flattened into a perfect cat-shaped flatness.
    Eyes closed,
    whiskers intact,
    tail curled,
    dead.
    ‘Rose!’
    Cecily leaned so far out of the window that she nearly toppled over and had to grab the honeysuckle to steady herself. There was no sign of her sister but glancing up, she saw a figure between the trees. She blinked and then there was nothing. Instead the thin faint sound of the wind chimes in the vegetable garden drifted across. Then nothing. She stared into the distance, frowning, puzzled, wondering if she should creep downstairs, knowing that the creaking floorboards might wake everyone if she did. Her father was back she saw, his bicycleleaning against the shed.